Large Occupiers Are Expanding Again: How Utilization Intelligence Helps Win the Next Top Lease

Large occupiers are expanding, trading up to prime space, and clustering in core markets—this is the moment for CRE teams to turn utilization intelligence into their unfair advantage.​

The big shift: expansions, upgrades, and core markets

CBRE’s “ Expansions by Large Occupiers Dominate Top 100 Office Leases of 2025” brief shows how sharply the market has turned toward big, quality‑focused commitments.​

• Expansions by large occupiers made up 55% of the 28.1 million sq. ft. in the 2025 Top 100 office leases, up from less than half in 2024.​
• Relocations rose to 31% of top‑occupier activity, and nearly two‑thirds of those relocations were expansions—companies are moving and growing at the same time.​
• Manhattan alone captured 36% of Top 100 square footage, with Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. at 8% each, underscoring a renewed focus on core, talent‑rich markets.​
• Downtown buildings accounted for 59% of the Top 100 leases, with prime and Class A assets capturing nearly 80% of large‑occupier demand.​

In other words, the biggest office users are making fewer, more consequential bets in specific locations and higher‑quality buildings.

Who’s expanding: finance, insurance, and tech

The CBRE brief makes clear that the return of large office commitments is not evenly distributed by industry.​

• Finance & Insurance tenants account for 29% of the Top 100 leased square footage, up sharply from 17% in 2024.​
• Technology is close behind at 28% of total square footage, reflecting continued demand in markets like Silicon Valley and other tech hubs.​
• Nearly two‑thirds of the leasing activity by both Finance & Insurance and Technology is in expansions, signaling that many of the largest occupiers in these sectors are back in growth mode.​

These are data‑driven, experience‑sensitive occupiers. They expect transparency, flexibility, and a clear link between workplace and performance. That’s exactly where utilization data changes the conversation.

Example: a global bank upgrading in Manhattan

Imagine a global Finance & Insurance tenant evaluating an expansion and relocation in Manhattan—still the single largest destination for Top 100 lease activity, with 36% of 2025 square footage.​

What they’re worried about:

• Can they consolidate into fewer, higher‑quality floors without creating congestion at peak times?
• Will collaboration zones be adequately used, or will employees default back to desks and private offices?
• Can they justify a premium rent to their own CFO with hard evidence about productivity, client access, and employee experience?

How Lambent Spaces helps the owner and leasing team:

• Before the deal: Lambent leverages Wi-Fi metadata to generate utilization heatmaps of building, floor, and zone-level occupancy as well as amenities in those key spaces.
• During planning: CRE and workplace teams discover underutilized space or well-loved spaces to create “what if” scenarios—such as moving from four floors to three while adding more shared collaboration zones—using historical occupancy patterns to predict where bottlenecks might emerge.
• At the table: Leasing teams show Finance teams how to predict future space utilization from historical data, identifying where reductions or new spaces provide an improved experience for employees. Understanding well-loved spaces and what assets and amenities are there can help space planners earn the commute and engagement of employees.

In a Manhattan market where prime and Class A space is heavily favored by large occupiers, that utilization evidence becomes a differentiator—not just “great views and a renovated lobby,” but a quantified story about how the building performs day to day.​

Example: a tech occupier expanding in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley accounts for 8% of 2025’s Top 100 square footage and has increased its share of large leases compared with 2024. Technology’s 28% share of leased square footage in the Top 100 reflects continued appetite for high‑quality, innovation‑friendly space.​

A large tech tenant in this market is likely asking:

• How do we balance hybrid work with a more “destination‑worthy” HQ?
• Which neighborhoods, floors, and amenities actually pull people in versus those that sit empty?
• If we expand our footprint, where should we invest to support focused work, engineering collaboration, and talent attraction?

How Lambent Spaces supports both sides of the table:

• For Owners: Lambent shows how tenants use outdoor space, cafes, labs, and collaboration zones over time, highlighting which amenities are real magnets for occupancy.
• For Workspace planners: Post‑move‑in, Lambent gives tech leaders ongoing visibility into how teams choose to work on‑site—feeding continuous improvement of space mix, desk ratios, and team neighborhoods.
• For Leasing strategists: The lease manager can demonstrate that the building doesn’t just have amenities; it can prove those amenities actually drive presence and engagement for innovation‑focused teams.

This is especially important in tech, where leaders constantly experiment with work patterns and expect live data, not just annual surveys.

How Lambent turns macro trends into micro decisions

Lambent helps building owners and occupiers translate big picture market shifts like hybrid work, tightening budgets, and evolving tenant expectations into data driven action plans at the asset level. Our utilization intelligence makes it possible to validate, model, and optimize space decisions with measurable proof rather than assumptions.

• Win the next expansion or relocation

- Use historical and live utilization data to show large occupiers how your building performs today, not how you hope it will perform after a deal.

- Walk into negotiations with objective evidence on peak loads, circulation patterns, and amenity usage—de‑risking expansion and consolidation decisions for tenants’ internal stakeholders.

• Design right‑sized, future‑proofed footprints

- Benchmark current occupancy and utilization ahead of renewals, so you can recommend the right mix of floors, neighborhoods, and shared amenities.

- Test multiple scenarios for densification, hub‑and‑spoke models, or campus consolidations, guided by real evidence rather than assumptions.

• Invest surgically in experience and quality

- Identify which spaces are consistently underused and which are over‑subscribed, so capex flows to projects that visibly improve tenant outcomes.

- Track the impact of changes over time—did that new collaboration hub actually drive presence on Fridays, or did employees continue to cluster elsewhere?

Large occupiers are back in growth mode, and they are making bigger, more selective bets on office space—favoring prime and Class A assets in core markets and driving a surge in expansions and relocation‑driven growth. That shift raises the bar for CRE teams, who now must prove not just location and aesthetics, but how their buildings actually perform for hybrid work, collaboration, and productivity.

Utilization intelligence from Lambent Spaces turns existing building signals into actionable insight, helping owners compete for large occupiers, right‑size and de‑risk expansions, and invest surgically in upgrades that truly matter. By pairing CBRE’s market‑level data with granular occupancy analytics, CRE leaders can move from reacting to trends to shaping them—one informed lease decision at a time.